Hepatitis can be caused by many infection agents, including hepatitis A, B, C, D, and E viruses and GB virus.
Viral hepatitis is the single most important cause of liver disease. Take hepatitis C for example, it is estimated to affect 170 million people worldwide. Patients with liver damage resulting from hepatitis C may develop chronic liver diseases, such as cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Hepatitis C can be treated with interferon α. However, only about 50% hepatitis C patients are responsive to the treatment. Other drawbacks to interferon α therapy include significant side effects, high costs, and poor responsiveness to hepatitis C virus genotype 1, the most common genotype in the United States. New therapies have being vigorously sought. Although several drug candidates are now being evaluated, the progress is rather slow due to a lack of appropriate animal models and uncertainty of responsiveness in humans.
Thus, there is a need for a reliable method for identifying drugs for treating hepatitis C and other viral hepatitis.